Defending Innocence (Small Town Lawyer Book 1)

by Peter Kirkland

  I laughed. “Good call.”

  “Does that picture help? That’s awesome.”

  “It just might. Is there a way you can email me the file with its original time stamp?”

  “Sure.” He made his way over to his laptop.

  I put a note in my calendar to ask Mazie about the T-shirt. To Noah, I said, “There’s no blood on that T-shirt either, is there.”

  He peered at his screen. “No. Even zoomed in, I don’t see anything red at all.”

  “Do you remember how he was acting that night? Or what he was talking about?”

  “’Course I remember,” he said defensively. “We only smoked that one bowl.”

  “Look, that’s not even what I meant. It was two months ago. Anybody could forget the details in that length of time.”

  He glanced over at me, then back at his laptop. His eyes flashed anger and apology all at once.

  “Well, he talked about Karl,” he said. “He was mad as hell, on account of the fight they’d had. And I’m not gonna lie, he said he wished Karl was dead. But he was talking like he was still alive. He said he wanted to do that Viking boat thing and see Karl’s face when he realized that was his boat on fire. And wasn’t Karl already dead by then?”

  I hesitated, then shook my head. “I wish I could tell you what we know and what we don’t, but I don’t want to, you know, influence what you actually remember.”

  He looked startled. “You gonna put me on the stand?”

  “Oh, hell no.” I wasn’t even sure I could put my own son on; that wasn’t something I’d ever looked up the rules for. But the idea gave me nightmare visions of Ruiz raking him over the coals to show he was an unreliable witness: Isn’t it true that you’re a drug user? Isn’t it true that you stole prescription opiates and then spent two months in rehab as part of a juvie-court plea deal?

  Not to mention the stress testifying would put on his sobriety. He might be Jackson’s only alibi, but I was going to have to find another way.

  After Noah went to bed, I hauled my briefcase over to the kitchen table and pulled out Ruiz’s fat manila envelope. The only thing in it was a report on the forensic examination of Karl’s boat. I flipped to the back page and saw the expert had signed it more than a week earlier. It was annoying that Ruiz had held off on giving it to me, but since today was exactly thirty days after I’d made my discovery request for all the forensic reports they had, it wasn’t technically late. Nothing I could complain about.

  I flipped back to the start. The summary said the boat appeared to have been hastily or carelessly scrubbed down. The fatal confrontation had apparently happened on deck. The report noted a damaged section of railing with blood and hair still stuck to it, and extensive bloodstains that had soaked into the deck. On the facing page were gruesome color photos of that evidence. Test results said that blood checked out as Karl’s.

  Belowdecks was an impressive range of local flora and fauna. I scanned through a bullet list more than half a page long that identified various seeds, leaves, scraps of tree bark, and scales from several different species of fish. The next page itemized types of dirt and sand. I truly had not realized how many different kinds of dirt there are.

  Then my eye stopped on an unexpected word: heroin. A trace amount had been recovered from the crack between two bits of Formica in a countertop. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Karl was a drinker; nothing I or Terri had dug up had pointed to his dabbling in any other substances, apart from the occasional joint. And Jackson certainly didn’t strike me as a user. The gangly arms that stuck out of his death metal T-shirts—and now his short-sleeved summer prison uniform—had no tracks on them. He’d also been stuck in jail for nearly two months, with no source of money I was aware of, and he didn’t act like a junkie in withdrawal. I’d seen my share of those in Charleston. It wasn’t pretty.

  Terri and I were going to have to look a little harder at Karl’s friends. I was making a note of that on my yellow pad when I heard, outside, the unmistakable sound of breaking glass. I turned the lights off and peeked out the curtain.

  The street was empty. I could see the blue flicker of TVs in a couple of the neighbors’ houses.

  My car was parked in the driveway. Something glittered inside. I turned off the porch light and stepped out to get a better look.

  The rear windshield was shattered. The streetlights were glinting off the pile of broken glass on the back dash.

  18

  Tuesday, July 30, Morning

  At work the next day I backed into a parking spot, hoping the dwarf palm tree on the curb would keep Roy from noticing the plastic-sheeting rear windshield that Noah and I had duct-taped to my car. It didn’t work. Roy headed out around eleven for a lunch date, but within three minutes, he was back inside and hanging off my doorframe.

  “Leland,” he said, “you can ask Laura for the number of my car place. I’m sure they could get that windshield fixed for you today.”

  “Thanks much,” I said. “Although I don’t know when I’m going to be able to get around to it. Lot going on with that murder case.”

  The case, of course, had nothing to do with my inability to repair the damage. I’d already gotten a quote for $350, and it was safe to assume that wherever Roy took his Beemer would charge more.

  He squinted like he thought he might not have heard me right.

  “Well, now,” he said, “perhaps there’s more complexities to that case than I’m aware of, or perhaps you didn’t know that Judge Chambliss takes the whole month of August off?”

  “His clerk did mention that,” I said.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Just so you know, all the judges who’ve been on the bench about as long as he has take three or four weeks off before Labor Day.” After another second of squinting at me, his face cleared. He stepped into my office, touched the door as if to close it, and asked, “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  He sat down in my guest chair and said, “Leland, believe me, I do not mean to pry. But that windshield of yours can’t be more than, what, a $500 repair? So I have to ask, are you having financial difficulties?”

  My gut sank. My dignity sank lower, to somewhere about the vicinity of my shoes.

  “Okay,” he said, leaning back in the chair. My face had apparently answered his question. He thought for a moment and added, “Well, building a practice takes time. And some folks are just not as gifted at that side of things.”

  With that remark, my dignity was now in Roy’s basement.

  He leaned forward like an athletic coach about to announce the next play. “Leland,” he said, “I still believe you’re an asset to Benton & Hearst, but I cannot have that redneck piece of junk sitting in my lot. The plastic sheeting is just—” He shook his head; it was beyond the pale. “So, here’s what we’re going to do. I have a client who owns a few auto dealerships. I’m sure I can arrange a very favorable lease. Not for the kind of car an attorney with your experience ought to be driving, but even something along the lines of a Chevy Malibu would be light-years better than what you’ve got. And probably under two hundred a month.”

  “Roy,” I said, “I so appreciate that, but candidly, I have no wiggle room in my budget at this point. Even a lease—”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “I can lease it on behalf of the firm, take the business deduction, and let you drive it. Some of that’ll be taxable to you, since the IRS always wants its cut, but that won’t amount to much. In the meantime, I’ll pass along a little more work for you to do. If you lighten my load a bit, I can take a vacation this month. And then you can roll that abomination you’re driving into the nearest swamp and pray folks in Basking Rock forget you ever owned it.”

  I was floored. “Roy—I don’t know what to say. Thank you so much. That is unbelievably generous.”

  He grinned and winked at me. “It ain’t charity,” he said. “It’s PR. If we don’t look successful, clients won’t think we’re any good.”

>   He rapped on my desk with his knuckles, drawing things to a close, and stood up. “I’m having lunch with Collin Porter, and we’ll be golfing the rest of the afternoon. I’ll have Laura give you a Blue Seas file to get started on. I never much enjoyed the research and writing end of things. The more of that you do, the more I get to take clients golfing.”

  I said, “Sounds like a win-win right there.”

  “Exactly.”

  An hour later, that good news was tempered by a frantic call from Mazie. Jackson had been hurt in jail and taken to the hospital, she said, but the hospital wouldn’t let her visit because he was under armed guard. Only his lawyer, they’d told her, was permitted.

  As I pulled out of the lot, I smiled at the thought that Roy would be happy, on his return from the golf course, to see my piece of junk had vacated the premises. On the causeway, the combination of my speed and the wind from the ocean loosened a corner of the plastic sheeting. It slapped against the frame so loudly it was like having a seagull trapped in the car with me. Apparently, even with the most versatile tape on the market, I was still not capable of carrying out solid repairs. The law was truly the only thing I was good at.

  I hoped I’d be good enough for Jackson.

  Our county detention center, where prisoners awaiting trial were held, was too small to have an infirmary. It had experienced medical staff, though, so Jackson must have been pretty seriously injured to be admitted to the local hospital.

  When I got to his room, I showed my bar card to the cop at the door. He nodded. A nurse was in the room changing IV bags. Something was beeping. She was blocking my view of Jackson’s face, but I could see his left hand was cuffed to the bed rail.

  As I walked in, I got a better view. His face was bruised to hell, and his jaw was wired shut. He glanced over when I said hello, then winced and let his head fall back where it had been.

  “Oh God,” I said. I could only think of one reason a person’s jaw would be wired shut. I asked the nurse, “Broken jaw?”

  She nodded. “Sorry I can’t say more,” she said. “There’s a form he’ll need to sign if he wants you to be able to get his medical information. I’ll leave the two of you to talk. You can use his communication board, if you want.”

  From the foot of his bed, she picked up a plastic board with the alphabet and the numbers from zero to ten printed on it, plus a few words: Water. Hungry. Hot. Cold. Pain.

  “He doesn’t like using this,” she said. “But maybe with you he’ll feel more like talking. I did just give him his morphine, but he should still be lucid for at least another twenty minutes or so.”

  “Okay, well, thank you.”

  When she left, I followed her to the door and told the cop, “I’m just going to shut this while I’m here, to consult with my client.”

  He shrugged. I shut it.

  I went back to Jackson and asked, “How you feeling?”

  He gave me a look.

  I picked up the communication board, scrutinized it, and said, “I’m not sure why, but ‘I feel like shit’ isn’t one of the options. Just hot, cold, and whatnot.”

  I heard a little snort and saw a smile flicker, then turn into a wince. He’d laughed, but it hurt. I had a gut-wrenching flash of déjà vu from when Noah was hospitalized in Charleston.

  “Goddamn,” I said. “I’m sorry. Okay, listen, I’m not going to hang out here too long. That morphine’s going to put you to sleep, and I’m sure that’s what you need. But if somebody at the jail did this to you, you tell me. I can get you moved, or I might even get them to revisit bail.”

  His eyes stayed closed. He knitted his brows together, but I couldn’t tell if it was from pain or, possibly, anger.

  “How about this,” I said. “Just tap the sheet with your right hand. Once for yes, two for no. Did a prisoner do this to you?”

  His eyebrows were still drawn together. I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, but then his hand moved. Two taps.

  “Goddamn it!” I said. “It was a guard?”

  A tap. Then another.

  “No?”

  He didn’t move.

  “Not a prisoner or a guard? Are you sure?”

  He clenched his fist and pounded it on the bed. Three times, four times; it had no apparent meaning other than anger.

  I tried another angle. “Listen, Jackson. I’m your lawyer. Anything you tell me is confidential. If you don’t want me telling your mother what’s happened, I won’t. It’s just between us.”

  He seemed to be pointing at something. The communication board, I realized, where I’d set it halfway down the bed. I held it up.

  He opened his eyes a slit and jabbed his index finger at four letters: F-E-L-L.

  “You fell?”

  One tap on the mattress. Yes.

  I stared at him. He had at least half a dozen bruises on both sides of his face. I didn’t see how a person could hit his face in that many different places in a single accidental fall.

  “Okay,” I said, giving up for now. “I’m sorry if somebody back there’s got you too scared to even tell me, but you’re safe here, so I’ll let you get some rest. In the meantime, I’m doing everything I can to tear apart this town and figure out how to make you a free man again.”

  He didn’t say anything or even open his eyes.

  “I’ll check in again tomorrow,” I said. “And I’ll get the nurse to put my cell number in your file. Actually, I’ll put it right here too.” On the wall facing his bed was a small whiteboard with the nurse’s name written on it and a red marker attached to it with a string. I uncapped the marker and wrote across the bottom “Mr. Munroe (lawyer)” and my number.

  “Okay,” I said. “If you want me, just tell them to call me. Anytime, day or night.”

  That night, I took Squatter for a drive. He snoozed peacefully in his dog purse, which had a seat belt loop to keep him safely on the passenger seat. I sped down the causeway with the windows open, enjoying the racket and the salty air. I didn’t know what to make of Jackson’s unwillingness to confide in me, and I was hoping a drive might clear the cobwebs from my brain.

  Since the marina wasn’t too far off, I turned toward it. As I rounded the last corner and headed down the marina road, Squatter barked in his sleep. There was nobody on the road. My headlights skimmed bushes and the trunks of trees. If they hit a white T-shirt, I thought, I’d know it was white. All those death metal shirts Jackson wore were black.

  Down toward the end, the road forked: right to the old marina, and left to the new dock and clubhouse where the yacht charters moored. One of Blue Seas’ vessels was anchored there, a sleek white yacht with “Lady Jane” written on the side. I parked at the side of the road, eighty or a hundred yards short of the yacht, and got Squatter out to do his business. As he sniffed the bases of various palm trees, I watched a few uniformed men unloading barrels from some sort of opening in the side of the yacht. Waste barrels, maybe; they had biohazard symbols on the sides.

  I realized I didn’t know how to describe what I was seeing. The correct nautical terms were not in my vocabulary. When I was growing up, any boat with room for more than two or three passengers was for rich people, as far as I was concerned. As a result, I had a mental block when it came to port and starboard and whatever else rich sailing men talked about. I figured I should learn about boats now, since Roy was having me do more work for Blue Seas. Heck, I should’ve started learning as soon as I found out that the murder scene in Jackson’s case was a speedboat.

  There was an unpleasant, oily smell in the air. It had never smelled like this down here when I was a kid; all you could smell then was the water and, if you were close enough, the little bait hut that used to stand here, before the road was widened. Where the large dock and clubhouse now stood, there’d been tall rocks that we all liked to jump from. Henry’s company had brought more prosperity to Basking Rock, and I myself was starting to benefit from that. But I still wondered at what cost it had come.

  Squatter finished
his business and curled up on the asphalt. I figured it must still be warm from the long, scorching day. I scooped him up, turned back to my car, and was startled half to death to see a man looking at me from the grass a few yards past the passenger side. He had on what looked like the same uniform as the crew members unloading the barrels down by the dock.

  “Evening,” I said. “Sorry if I startled you.”

  He scowled at me and took off walking toward the water.

  I got in, locked the doors, and took a moment to get Squatter situated before turning the ignition and hightailing it out of there. I didn’t know if that man had meant to scare me or if the scowl was because he hadn’t wanted to be seen. Whatever it was, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

  19

  Thursday, August 1, Evening

  Roy told me the Malibu he’d leased for me would be ready to pick up on Friday at the dealership two towns over. That made me decide to visit the Broke Spoke again while I was still driving my beater. Somehow it felt wrong to take my brand-new company car to a strip club.

  When I pulled up, around six-thirty, I didn’t see the red Mustang. I parked anyway. Even if Kitty wasn’t around, she couldn’t be the only person there who’d known Karl.

  Inside, the place was dimly lit and, at most, half-full. At the back, on stage in purple light, a girl was dancing to some pulsing electronic beat. It wasn’t my kind of music. Then again, exotic dancing was probably not a great fit with the music of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

  I headed to the bar. Behind it, polishing a glass and occasionally glancing at the dancer, was Terri’s nemesis, Dunk. Like anyone from Basking Rock, I knew his name and face even if I’d never talked to him. He was built like a pro wrestler, about six four, with shoulders that looked like they might actually be three feet wide. As befitted an entrepreneur in the truck stop/strip club industry, his blond hair was cut in a mullet: business in front; long, shaggy party in back.